Valve Talks About Their PS3, Xbox 360 Failures

Their biggest 360 mistake? Thinking Xbox Live was "such a train wreck" that it'd eventually have to change.

Valve isn't a company that gamers would generally associate with failure, but in an interview with PC Gamer, the subject of their biggest mistakes was raised and it resulted in some fascinating answers -- particularly when it comes to Valve's past on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

"PS3, so far. The way we've dealt with those customers so far, and the product that they have, and the lack of updates on the 360 for [Team Fortress 2] is also a total failure," said project manager Erik Johnson, reflecting on Valve's mistakes. "Those are the ones that sting the worst because it got all the way through to customers. It's like a bug. If you fix a bug before it ever ships, it's pretty cheap. If you ship it and then fix it, it's really expensive. Those ones are really bad."

Things are going better on the PS3, though, as Valve boss Gabe Newell says they're pleased with their newly repaired relationship with Sony. "That's why we're really happy with the current situation with the PS3...We're solving it now in a way that is going to work for our customers, rather than assuming something is going to emerge later that will allow us to fix this," Newell said.

But as for the 360 specifically, Newell said their biggest mistake was assuming Microsoft's notoriously closed system with Xbox Live would eventually change. "We thought that there would be something that would emerge, because we figured it was a sort of untenable... 'Oh yeah, we understand that these are the rules now, but it's such a train wreck that something will have to change,'" Newell said.

Back in June, Newell shocked the crowd in attendance for Sony's E3 press conference when he came on stage to reveal the PS3 version of Portal 2, proclaiming it'd be the best console version of the game (this following multipleinstances where Newell publicly lambasted Sony's hardware).

Comments (29)

hmm maybe..

we can just get one full cd for tf2 with all the updates instead of 5 games sharing a cd idk its my opinion rant all u want on valve they are allowed to make mistakes. just fit yourself into their shoes and see how it is.

Gabe Newel is....

A gaming genius, so anyone who calls him stupid is a a bigger idiot, i look at it like this, PS3 owners are with joy and glad that someone like Gabe doesn't like XBL as much, Xbox owners are hating Gabe because he said this and now think he is the biggest idiot in the gaming world. Gabe loves Steam as we all know and he is glad that Steam is coming onto PS3 because it makes him updating his games easier and make it more enjoyable for the gamers, he was having trouble with XBL and i would be kinda mad too if i couldn't fix a game so it works better for the buyers, as we all know Gabe is all the way for the gaming community and he seems to like anything that helps him make their experience better.

lol

Gay Newell

is a sellout. how much did sony pay him to say what he said back in june at E3? Valve has no talent; the only game that I will admit is entertaining is portal. HL1 and 2 are extremely boring and TF2 can't compare to today's fps's; not that today's fps's are any good either.

Huh

Wait what?

"If you fix a bug before it ever ships, it's pretty cheap. If you ship it and then fix it, it's really expensive. Those ones are really bad."

Its cheaper to fix bugs in a game before it ships and its more expensive to bugs fix after the game ships. Ok, I get that but then why are they bashing the 360 for this?

Team Fortress 2 on the PC STILL gets bug fixes and the game is nearly 3 years old. Valve isn't exactly a paragon of bug-free day-one releases. Valve is being petty if they're bashing the 360 simply because Microsoft doesn't allow them to release a new bug fix every other week.

Good on Valve

As others have said, it's a tremendous show of class on Valve's part to admit to their mistakes. Because I don't play PC games, I know I was confused after hearing for years how amazing the Half Life games were, only to get a mess of a port on consoles.

i don't get it

people give away free maps and things all the time on XBL. what is the supposed charge-for-content requirement?

also, what good is the certification process? stuff shows up broken all the time. one of the Fallout3 DLC was completely broken where exclamation points (or was it question marks?) showed up everywhere...other things, even MS published, such as the recent free Crackdown2 DLC was also broken. so what does this certification actually do?

can someone at 1up do a story on this and actually explain it? things like this are always mentioned as if we understand from the inside...

It takes a lot to admit mistakes

However, Valve is aloud to make mistakes. They also make amazing games, and is a fan favorite among gamers. The fact that Steam is now coming to the PS3 is amazing. All Valve games will be able to receive all of the updates instantly, instead of having to wait for approval processes. Even more amazing is the fact that this could mean that all games that are on the PC version of Steam and the PS3 could have the automatic updates and patches as well. This is great news.

I'm pretty sure

It's just Steamworks coming to PS3. Which means, yes the saves will be stored in the cloud, but it's not the entire steam client/library so non-Valve PS3 games will probably still get seperate updates from the PC versions.